In the linked essays that make up "This Is One Way to Dance," Sejal Shah explores identity, culture, family, and the geographical and cultural distances between people, both real and imagined. She reflects on what it means to make oneself visible and legible in a country that struggles with race. Her essays emerge as she wrestles with her experiences living in western New York, an area of stark racial and socioeconomic segregation, as the daughter of Gujarati immigrants from India and Kenya.